As senior politicians gathered for a lavish celebration, mass killings underscored the country’s deepening security crisis

It has been described as Nigeria’s wedding of the year – and it is only February.

This month, five sons and five daughters of the junior defence minister Bello Matawalle married their spouses in an opulent six-day celebration in Abuja. The sheer scale of the extravaganza in the capital prompted one of the comperes to exclaim on Instagram: “First of its kind … @guinnessworldrecords check this out.”